On words and freedom

I stumbled across two posts that resonated deeply with my life's recent confusion. And my "recent" I mean 2.5-months-ago-and-still-unresolved. Read excerpts from the posts by Addie Zierman:

• In Defense of the 4-Letter Word: "And as I tried to navigate my way through it, I found that darn it was no longer the honest response. 'Shoot' didn’t really cut it. 'Where the heck are you God' wasn’t really what I wanted to say when I screamed into the quiet. The right words were the ones that I wasn’t “supposed” to say, and they cut to the heart of my pain like arrows. They said it exactly right."
• More Than You Can Handle: "We’re laughing because it’s such a wildly inappropriate, overused phrase. It is the period meant to end the run-on sentence of another person’s pain. It’s the thing we say to each other when we don’t know what to say." 

Last month there was a lot of, "Where the hell are you, God?" and a bit of "Bullshit, I don't believe you." I'll admit it's strange to even see the words typed out here on my page, though I've used them on my own in my angst. Her description is right: when I screamed into the quiet is probably when these words just fit.

I want to apologize, to give disclaimers for use of those words. I think of the parents who would look disapprove of me, the students who use different language around me because I am staff. But I also think of the times I envied the freedom for others to use the words that just fit.

Being a follower of Jesus doesn't mean that life is smooth--I know this. But what I also want to remind myself is this: I don't have to pretend it's smooth. And perhaps most importantly: following Jesus means freedom. Freedom. Freedom to express, to commune with God, to speak to him at all times in all situations. It means being real and being myself, opening who I am to who He has created me to be. And none of those descriptions mean I can't swear.

There's a great comment from one of the readers on the second article: Like we’re not really supposed to admit it when life gets bad because that might mean our God’s not coming through for us; like we have to cover for God or something.

I think something about these are clicking because it's been two and a half months and we still don't know what's going on and why Darrell isn't in Sacramento. He hasn't found a job and none of the leads have worked out. Nothing is filling in so we can't say, "Well, it's working out anyway" because it isn't. He's at home and neither of us are exactly surrounded by good friends. But when I'm telling people what's going I feel like I have to say that we're working on it, God's working on it, he's doing his best (you can blame societal expectation for this one). But the truth is, I don't know what God is doing. I don't see what's so great about this plan with D's original plan being delayed and us being long distance. I think it's a bunch of crap that so many people passed but he didn't, and I don't think it's fair.

And maybe this time around I won't apologize for these feelings. Maybe this time around I'll just leave it at that and not end with some Christian clause. Maybe this time around I'll pull out these thoughts and frustrations that haven't gone away. This time around I'll cry out and tell my God, It still isn't fair and I don't get it. And hell, it's okay if I can't handle it...